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FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

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1737 points pseudolus | 2 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.458s | source
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Uehreka ◴[16 Oct 24 15:57 UTC] No.41860626[source]▶
When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are.

There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the link) I’m either immediately unsubscribed from the person who sent me the email, or I’m taken to a page which seemingly MUST have a “remove me from all emails” option.

The level of compliance (and they can’t even do malicious compliance!) with this is absurd. If these new rules work anything like that, they’ll be awesome. Clearly regulating behavior like this is indeed possible.

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1. danaris ◴[16 Oct 24 17:41 UTC] No.41861678[source]▶
Unfortunately, it's not foolproof.

During the ~20 years that my predecessor in my current job worked in it, it gradually evolved from being primarily a hardware position with a little software development to primarily a software position with a little hardware building. My moderate expertise with electronic hardware helped get me the job, but then I basically never had to use it in the ~15 years I've been here.

I still get multiple emails from Electronic Design daily. No amount of attempting to unsubscribe stops them. I've blocked multiple sending email addresses; they rotate them fairly frequently.

It's possible I could report them for this (I haven't researched it), but since I think my spam filter has missed maybe 1-2 emails in all that time, it tends not to be worth it.

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2. Bjartr ◴[16 Oct 24 17:58 UTC] No.41861842[source]▶
Report them here https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

The FAQ confirms this is the correct place to report email spam https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/faq